


Heart-Shaped Holes

by sithblood



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Future AU, M/M, Suicide mention, ptsd!neil, the foxhole court - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 06:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6317785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sithblood/pseuds/sithblood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neil was just surviving - existing, really, but who was really paying attention? Andrew, mostly. Neil was damaged goods, but Andrew knew how to take care of him. He always did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> a.k.a some andreil angst that i wrote for my buddy zoe that turned out way longer than i had anticipated

The sun was too hot, or whatever. No, not hot – scorching, irritating, something worth screaming about, maybe. Why the hell couldn’t he remember the words he wanted?

“Andrew. The sun’s pissing me off. What’s the word I’m looking for?”

Andrew closed his book and set it on the coffee table, retracting his legs from between Neil’s as he stretched, his shirt riding upwards a little.

“Bright.”

Shit – that was it! Andrew was an incredible man, really. It was annoying that Neil’s vocabulary had shrunk to the size of a housefly, or a spider or something, but he didn’t need it. He didn’t fucking need it.

Maybe he should get out, or something. Andrew might be happy lying on the sofa reading fucking Hemingway and Poe all day, but Neil was an idiot, and a little stir-crazy. His shadow had been looking at him funny for an hour, and his right eye was hurting. The air was starting to thin.

“Shut up, Neil. I can hear you thinking.”

Neil was starting to suspect Andrew was a psychic, or at least magically inclined. Maybe Neil was just an easy read. Either way, he hated people in his head – it reminded him of his father, how he’d been psychic too, how he’d gotten into Neil’s head and stirred it up until he was just one big crazy stew of panic and paranoia.

“I’m going to go out, Andrew.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s, uh, a beautiful day. Bright, and that.”

Andrew had picked up his book again, but took a moment to peer over it and send Neil his most disbelieving glance. It made Neil’s skin itch on the inside.

“I gotta go!”

Neil scrambled up from the sofa, the back of his neck sweating as he pulled on a coat with fingers that seemed to always be trembling. Shit, that was the least subtle he’d been in his entire life. Andrew was going to think he was up to something. He was going to suspect. He was going to follow him, or hate him, or change the locks while he was out – or something.

“If you’re leaving, stop by the pharmacy. You’re running low again.”

Of course. Of course Andrew wouldn’t hate him. He didn’t, surely. He was speaking normally and being domestic and shit. People didn’t do that if they hated you.

“Will-do-bye!” Neil said, his words stitching themselves into one short sentence as he yanked the door open and shoved on a pair of grotty trainers. It caught on its hinges halfway, resisting as Neil tried to pry it further.

“Leave it, Neil. It’s okay.”

No it wasn’t. It fucking wasn’t, and Andrew knew it. He was an idiot who forgot words and sweated too much and couldn’t sit still and tripped over easy sentences and got up too quickly and couldn’t even open the fucking door, but Andrew wasn’t shouting or breaking anything, so Neil didn’t protest. He just slipped out of the apartment and dug a hand into his pocket to trace the grooves of their house key.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Neil never drove anywhere if he could help it. Cars – cars weren’t such happy places for him, especially if there was someone other than Andrew sat in them. They reminded him of leather seats and endless interstate and cigarette lighters and an empty, creeping dread in the pit of his stomach that made him feel sick.

Buses he could deal with, though. If he was facing the window and nobody was sat next to him, Neil could ride on them and not have a panic attack.

He had his forehead leant again the window, which felt nice against the ache behind his right eye. It had spread to the entire half of his head, and he didn’t know how much more he could take before he started smashing things. It was a good thing Andrew had sent him to the pharmacy.

There was a couple in the aisle next to him, a guy and a girl, fair-skinned and dark-haired, slim and pretty and cut out of a magazine. Neil wanted to frame them and hang them on his wall. They were arguing, though, both of them hissing at each other like snakes and exchanging lots of long, meaningful looks.

It hurt Neil’s head a little – he’d only had three hours of sleep, and beautiful people who clearly belonged together shouldn’t have been arguing on a bus that smelt like bleach and citrus, and that had obscene graffiti scrawled over the backs of every seat. It was just – embarrassing. Frustrating. Pitiful.

Fuck, no. Not again. None of those words were what Neil meant, and Andrew wasn’t here to correct him, and the couple was still arguing and it smelt too strongly of bleach and the sun was starting to drift behind a cloud and someone was smoking even though there weren’t meant to on the bus and Neil couldn’t breathe suddenly, and it hurt so bad, in his lungs and his fingers and behind his eyes.

He might have lost it, if he hadn’t noticed his phone ringing. He hurried to pick it up before someone started to complain, and sank back in relief against the bus seat as he read the caller ID.

“The pharmacy, Neil. You’re almost out, remember?”

“Mmm.”

“Breathe, Neil. You’re okay.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

“Good. See you soon.”

The line clicked off as Andrew hung up, and Neil flipped his phone closed. He hadn’t replaced it, even after all these years. He was almost out. He was almost there. The bus had stopped, and the couple were getting off now.

 


	3. Chapter 3

The woman in front of him was old and smelt like dust and looked like she was melting into the floor. Nobody except the receptionist and a nervous young man were talking, so the whole shop was much too quiet, the upbeat folk-punk playing over the speakers just making the whole thing more depressing.

Neil blinked, scratched at his eye and peered at the shelf next to him, wondering if they sold anything for headaches. He’d ask, once it was his turn.

“NO! I mean, ahem, no. I’m not – I need those pills, you see. My doctor prescribed them – I’m a very sick man, he said, very sick, and they help. To calm me, and such. I’m not – how dare you insinuate I’m _addicted_?”

The nervous man at the desk was leaning over almost all of it, his sweaty young face uncomfortably close to the receptionist’s as he spoke, a glob of spit glistening at the side of his mouth. The old woman in front of Neil sighed disapprovingly, her wrinkled jowls wobbling as she shook her head.

“I’m sorry sir, but without a written prescription from your GP I’m not allowed to sell you the drugs you’re asking for. Now, if you’re done, there are other customers waiting.”

The store was silent for a moment, in which the man breathed heavily and the old woman frowned and the receptionist adjusted her name tag. Then the man made some ugly, guttural sound of defeat before turning and stalking back through the aisles of medicines towards the exit. The old woman rolled her eyes, following his retreating figure to the door until he had disappeared onto the street.

It turned out that she didn’t need much, just something for her husband’s bad back that cost a lot and made her sigh at least twice more. It seemed an eternity before Neil was served.

“What can I do for you?” the receptionist asked, drumming her nails against the desk. She was young, dark-skinned and pretty, smelling of mint and pineapple as she pretended not to chew gum.

“Uh, here’s the prescription.” Neil hadn’t even realised he’d picked it up on the way out until he found it in his coat pocket on the way to pharmacy. Andrew must had put it in there before Neil had left.

“Thanks. Hmm… alright, this is fine. I’ll be five minutes.”

She fished a key from a plastic clip on her hip and turned to unlock a door behind her, then paused with her fingers on the handle.

“Hey – aren’t you that Exy guy? From Penn State?”

Neil started, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end as he nodded dumbly. He noted darkly that she had probably expected a sports star to be a little more… intimidating. Noble. Fuck. Muscular. Shit. Maybe. That wasn’t it, though. 

“Hey, dude, are you okay?”

Neil blinked and unclenched his teeth. The receptionist looked mildly concerned for his wellbeing.

“Uh, yeah, thanks. It’s good to meet you.”

She smiled at him, although it didn’t reach her eyes.

“I’ll go and get your prescription, yeah?”


	4. Chapter 4

Neil probably shouldn’t have been sat on a park bench with two capsules of Prozac, a cheese and ham sandwich and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in a shopping bag, feeling sorry for himself, but his life was made up of exceedingly poor choices one after another, so it wasn’t like he was counting at this point.

His day had been shit – or maybe it had been great, and shit was just the first word that came to mind. It wasn’t like he was depressed or anxious or something (except that he was.) Other people had it worse than him – hell, his own boyfriend had had it millions more painful than he had, so it wasn’t his place to complain. He just took his pills when Andrew told him to, went to the doctor’s and tried to survive on a life of Exy and sleepless nights and making out on his sofa.

He took another swig of Jack Daniel’s and rubbed at his eyes, thankful for the clear head. It gave him time to think.

So he thought about his trembling hands and the fighting couple and the smell of bleach and the forgotten words and the flip phone and the old woman and the young man and the receptionist and the pills in sat in a plastic bag next to him, and Andrew. He thought about Andrew’s calm against his crazy, his never-ending knowledge and easy corrections and conveniently timed phone calls and lazy kisses and promises that everything was okay.

The park was cold, and there were only three people, and nobody had been walking a dog, and Neil felt like a well that people kept drinking from even though it had only ever been empty. He could feel his father in the back of his mind, a ghost with frozen fingers that turned all his thoughts sour and made his stomach turn.

He was emptying the pills into his hand before he knew what he was doing, cupping them in his palm as he wondered idly how long it would take someone to find his body, and if Andrew would be mad, or throw anything. Neil tried not to think about it, because he was so, so tired, and his head was a fractured mess and his chest hurt and he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking all the goddamned time.

He would have swallowed all of the pills if his phone hadn’t started ringing. Neil emptied them back into the bottle and flipped open his phone, knowing who it would be before he even picked it up.

“I hope you’re not doing anything stupid, Neil. I’m expecting you back in thirty minutes, tops, and if you’re not here by then I’m calling the police.”

“Curfew’s new, Andrew. I like it.”

“People who do stupid things get curfews, Neil, and I know you’re about to do something truly idiotic. My head starts to hurt when you do.”

“Interesting. You should get that checked out, probably.”

“Don’t be smart, Neil. I’m coming to get you. Where are you, anyway?”

“The park. You know, the one by the pharmacy.”

“You better not be dead or seriously injured when I get there. I suggest you clean yourself up in the next ten minutes or so.”

“Thank you, Andrew.”

“Don’t make me regret it.”

Neil closed his eyes and smiled into the receiver.

“I love you, Neil. It’s going to be okay.”


End file.
